My Food Bag Uncovers How Kiwis Tastes And Food Trends Have Evolved As They Celebrate 9th Birthday

My Food Bag has been feeding and inspiring hungry Kiwis through their hassle-free meal kits since 2013. Celebrating their 9th birthday, My Food Bag has reflected on the last year and the 20-million meals created by Kiwis to launch their Annual Foodies’ Trends Report.

The Report uncovers how our love for getting creative in the kitchen has grown, particularly after spending months on end at home due to Covid-19.

Head of Development Kitchen, Polly Brodie, says one of their most popular options, My Choice – featuring 15 different recipes to choose from every week – has been incredibly successful in taking Kiwi’s on food adventures.

Themed menus to excite customers in the last year have included a local food truck campaign, with recipe collaborations with iconic NZ food trucks as well as their Taco Takedown. “We served up a different taco every week earlier this year, including our popular Miso Glazed Pork Belly Taco. These recipes rate really well, with one third of our top 30 recipes being brand new campaign recipes,” said Polly.

“We’ve seen a huge demand in takeaway style food with foodies wanting to create their go-to favourites at home. We’ve also noticed that dining trends and social media are opening people up to being more adventurous with their eating, for example, gochujang – fermented Korean chili paste – would have been scary to some before, but Korean food is huge right now, we have supplied nearly 9 tonnes of our famous Korean Sticky Chilli Sauce in the last year alone!”

Kiwi’s also want ease and convenience, with our ready-made meals increasing year on year. This speaks to our continued love of comfort food with a huge amount of top rated and highly selected recipes being delicious, comforting meals set to sooth the soul.

Development Kitchen Manager, Amber Thoresen says “Kiwis LOVE comfort food! In 2021, our customers went crazy for fragrant curries, decadent pastas, cheesy lasagnes, home-made pies and tray bakes, with a strong preference towards our 15-minute recipe options. Our most popular 15-minute recipe of the year was Chorizo Pappardelle with Red Pepper Pesto Sauce.

“Burgers also continued to be a popular option for Kiwi foodies, with 30,000 wagyu beef sliders being snapped up over Summer and more than 635,000 burgers enjoyed across the year,” said Amber.

The biggest overall trend My Food Bag observed was an increasing demand for a variety of proteins. Although Kiwis continued their love for favourites like free range chicken, lamb and beef – with their Seared Beef Eye Fillet featuring Handcut Chips & Pink Peppercorn Béarnaise being their most popular dish of 2021 – they also ordered more New Zealand free farmed pork and venison, as well as seafood and vegetarian options.

“Protein variety has increased a lot over the past year. Seafood used to be a polarising choice, but these days our fish, salmon and prawn recipes are very popular – particularly over the warmer months. Our customers have also proven to us that protein doesn’t have to be meat based with tofu, falafel, free range eggs and legumes forming the main protein source for many recipes. We have sampled plant-based chicken and minces too and will keep trying new products as they come to market,” said Amber.

As well as supporting local farmers, Kiwis craved add-ons from some of New Zealand’s most well-known producers, including but not limited to:

• Culley’s – Culley’s have blended over 1.1T of New Zealand grown Habanero chilies into my Food Bag products since day one of their 7-year-strong spicy and saucy relationship
• Paneton – Kiwis cannot get enough of garlic! My Food Bag provided over 1,000 Kiwis with their special Garlic Aioli and just short of 3,000 Paneton’s Real Butter Garlic Bread
• House of Dumplings – Adding to everything from pizza to dumplings, Kiwis ordered more than 260L of House of Dumplings’ Chili Oil

And finally, Kiwis were able to satisfy their sweet tooth through My Food Bag’s new Kitchen offering where the Brown Butter Choc Chunk Cookie Mix and Strawberry Mascarpone Cheesecake proved to be last year’s most popular offerings.

To celebrate their 9th birthday with New Zealand and add more variety to their ever-expanding range, My Food Bag has released a special birthday cake in their Kitchen – Vanilla Cake with Plum Buttercream and Almonds – and during birthday week (10 – 16 April) will be giving away 500 cake boxes to randomly selected bags for delivery and 100 cake boxes to their most loyal customers over the years, as well as releasing a limited edition e-book with their top 12 recipes available for free download here.

To find out more and explore their delicious recipe options, visit myfoodbag.co.nz.

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